CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE. 93 
one of their countrymen on board returning from slavery, 
they greeted us with cheers, after their fashion, and clapping 
of hands. A great quantity of shell fish, of the Mya genus, 
are taken out of the mud round Kampenzey island by the 
natives; and the fish, stuck on wooden skewers, as the 
French do frogs, and half dried, are an object of traftic ; 
their state of half putrefaction being entirely to the taste of 
the Negroes. In a raw state they are uneatable, having no 
flavour of the oyster, though confounded with that fish by 
the English who have visited the river. 
Atnoon, we weighed with a light breeze at S. W., and ran 
along the main bank until opposite the entrance of Max- 
well’s river, when, by the advice of a native on board, we 
attempted to pass between the two easternmost of Draper’s 
islands, but found them joined by a bank with only 6 feet, 
where deepest ; and keeping too close to the eastern island 
we grounded in 25 feet, but shoved the boat off without 
difficulty ; and by sending the gig ahead, passed round the 
shoals through a very winding channel in 2, 3, and 4 
fathoms; then ran along the-south side of Monkey’s 
island of the chart (Zoonga Chinganga of the natives), and 
the islands east of it, in 6, 7, 8, and 9 fathoms. Here we 
lost the mangrove tract, and the soil became a stiff clay, cut 
into perpendicular low cliffs at the margin of the river, 
